Profile

William Feyerherm received his PhD in Criminal Justice Systems from the State University of New York at Albany in 1977. He is currently a professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Portland State University, where he was the Vice Provost for Research and Dean of Graduate Studies from 1997 through 2010. His research activities focus on the role of race and culture in the processing of youth within the juvenile justice system.

He currently serves as a member of the Federal Advisory Committee on Juvenile Justice and the Oregon Youth Development Council, a body developed to oversee all State services for youth aged 6 through 20. In recent years he has served on other advisory bodies including: the Oregon Juvenile Justice Advisory Commission, the Multnomah County Juvenile Justice Advisory Council, the Multnomah County Local Public Safety Coordinating Council, and the Oregon Law Enforcement Contacts Policy Commission (examining racial profiling in law enforcement). He is a consultant to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention on issues of Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC), including the development and interpretation of the Relative Rate Index measure for DMC.

For OJJDP, Dr. Feyerherm is directing (along with Marcia Cohen), the DMC evaluation, "Expanding the Use of Disproportionate Minority Contact Data: Analysis of Patterns to Identify Best Practices." He also serves as an expert consultant to the Civil Rights Division of the US Department of Justice on the development of cases involving patterns of disparate treatment of juveniles in juvenile court systems. In 2002, Dr. Feyerherm received the W.E.B. DuBois Award from the Western Society of Criminology for his contributions to racial and ethnic issues in criminology.